


Sweet Wild Road Ahead

by cygnes



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Background Relationships, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 16:44:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11741076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: Whether or not the man in black is really dead, Roland can't seem to get any peace.





	Sweet Wild Road Ahead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



> Originally posted [here](http://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/163891024330/also-because-i-am-predictable-weird-hostile) on tumblr, for [skazka](http://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/pseuds/skazka)'s prompt "weird hostile flirting from the tittering disembodied voice of the man in black/Roland." Because I have no sense of restraint, I also threw in some dream invasion. 
> 
> Set during _The Drawing of the Three_ and the beginning of _The Waste Lands_. It's pretty heavily implied that Roland has (or had) romantic feelings for both Cuthbert and Susan, and that he might grow to feel similarly about Eddie and Susannah, but this is also mostly set when Roland is delirious with fever, so he's not doing too much self-reflection.

The voice of the man in black is easy to ignore at first. At first, though, Roland is whole and healthy. And like all creatures of his ilk, the man in black preys on weakness.

When the fever rages through him, Roland’s world is sharp and dim by turns. The sharpness comes in dreams, and his dreams—

His dreams often go in a certain direction.

He is sitting with Cuthbert on a hillock, looking out over a landscape both familiar and alien. He’s sure he was never here with Cuthbert, but he was here, even if he can’t remember exactly when. The air shimmers with heat but the grass is green.

“I want to tell you I’ll be waiting,” Cuthbert says. “I want to say there’s a clearing at the end of the path, like we always said.” He shakes his head and smiles, but there’s none of his old humor in it. “I can’t tell you anything. Some advance guard I am. Can’t scout worth a damn.”

Roland looks down at Cuthbert’s hand, splayed out in the long grass. Only it isn’t Cuthbert’s hand. He doesn’t have a gunslinger’s calluses.

“We’ll never make it at the end, you and me,” says the man sitting next to him. Roland looks back at his face. Still Cuthbert, mostly, and when he turns to look full at Roland there’s a hole where one of his eyes should be. The broken-off end of an arrow. But there’s a glint behind the arrow—a glint of gold, like there’s more in the socket than smashed eyeball and splinters of bone. “Ka like a wheel, that’s us. And the wheel doesn’t stop turning.”

The face of the man next to him now is almost the face of a stranger. In his twenties, like Cuthbert was at the end, but there’s little else alike about them. Aside from the arrow. His dark hair is unevenly cut, sticking up like crows’ feathers.

“Do I know thee?” Roland says.

“Yes,” the man says.

And then Roland is dizzily aware of dimness, of the deep-voiced meaningless questions echoing over the roar of the surf. He cannot move; can barely speak. A familiar face swims into view above him and he calls out for Cuthbert, young and whole again but looking at him with hate. Looking at him with sickness, like Roland’s own weakness has poisoned him.

(Sometimes he knows that the man on the beach is Eddie Dean of New York. Not always.)

The voice doesn’t go away as his strength improves again, but he no longer dreams of the man in black. Or he doesn’t remember if he does. The woman (women?) joins them and going gets difficult again. First because Detta wants them dead, and then because the sickness starts to thread its greedy way back up his arm. His strength fails. Eddie’s starting to weaken, too, and the muscle on Odetta’s arms shows through her skin too starkly. No fat left to cushion it. Sometimes he thinks he can feel the jawbone in his purse vibrating with silent laughter. The Lady of the Shadows may last the longest, but none of them will make it into the hills unless something changes.

Something does change. More than one thing, in fact. Susannah Dean is born, midwifed into the world through a door that serves as a mirror. And Roland makes the choice that will drive him to the edge of madness.

He falls to fever again even as they both tend to him. He falls to dreams.

The man in black sometimes speaks to him through the mouths of others, his beloved dead, and that is unsettling enough. To hear that dead man’s laugh coming from Cort (a more merciless version of Cort, who hurts to control rather than correct) or some sneering vulgarity from steadfast Alain is bad. But worse is when he finds himself talking to Walter, Walter _himself_ , unexpectedly. Roland is always slower to notice than he should be.

Walter looks at him over his mother’s shoulder, eyes intent, as a man who should be Marten Broadcloak leads her through the steps of a courting dance. Only somehow this seems like no change at all to what he remembers. The dream shifts to something he shouldn’t remember—couldn’t remember. Though maybe he did imagine it when he rode out from Gilead with Cuthbert and Alain. On nights when sleep wouldn’t come and he lay there, hurt and furious and thinking in circles.

“Would you know her as I did?” Marten-or-Walter says. “Or would you feel as she did when I took her? I can satisfy your curiosity either way.” His mother’s face is hidden against the man in black’s shoulder. Roland can’t tell whether the stifled sounds she’s making are from pain or enjoyment, and he wouldn’t trust anything he learned here, given its source. The man in black would show him whatever would hurt him more.

Roland swims up from the pit of that dream into what seems a sweeter dream.

“Suze, I think he’s waking up.” Suze—that would be Susan. And the voice calling her is familiar, too. Perhaps he has died. This is the clearing at the end of the path, with love waiting for him. “Oh, Christ, isn’t he supposed to be getting better faster than this?”

Roland draws breath to say that he didn’t know Cuthbert to be a follower of the Man Jesus, and his chest burns with the effort. Not dead yet, then. Not quite.

“He had trouble swallowing his last dose, but he tried to swallow that dry,” a woman’s voice says. “I’ll stay with him while you get more water.” A hand cards through his hair, short nails scratching against his scalp. “I’ve seen you worse, and I haven’t known you long,” Susannah says. “You’ll be fine.”

He takes the pill and slides down into dreamless darkness. For a time, anyway, he is untroubled.

Roland’s health improves. He can be a teacher and a leader. Even that, though, can only last so long. He feels like he’s being torn in half. The voice of the man in black seems determined to help the process along. Roland teaches Eddie the gunslinger’s creed and that cruel, hollow voice says _oh, yes, that’s very good—that will encourage a fatherless wretch to share your values_.

It should be a relief to throw the jawbone into the fire after he tells the full story and explains about Jake who died, Jake who still lives. But he hears a trill of tittering laughter as the bone blackens. Ka like a wheel. This isn’t the last time they’ll meet.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the lyrics of "[The Devil's Paintbrush Road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP-3OBY9ab0)" by The Wailin' Jennys.


End file.
